Our Stories

Hundreds of residents of Zadar now regularly flock to the market each Saturday morning to buy fresh fruit, vegetables and other produce directly from local farmers who previously struggled to find an outlet for their goods.
The new market has provided a much-needed boost to the incomes of local farmmore

Today, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark and Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor I. Shuvalov signed a landmark Partnership Framework Agreement between Russian Federation and UNDP during a meeting on the margins of the Davos World Economic Forum.
The Agreement creates a foundation for amore

When Drita, 22, recently arrived at the National Centre for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of the Victims of Domestic Abuse, near Tirana, she had already been head of household, a mother, a wife, a girl, and a dreamer. She had also endured violence at home.
Her husband had changed after the birth more

An olive oil plant in Kilis, Turkey will bring new life into the olive industry while providing much needed livelihood opportunities to a community that has doubled in population due to the influx of refugees from neighbouring Syria.
The new organic olive oil facility officially started production lmore

The UNDP “Aid for Trade” project recently distributed valuable labour-saving milking machines to women farmers in Shtërpcë/Štrpce, a municipality of Albanian and Serbian communities, in a mountainous region favourable to livestock breeding.
Ms. Selvete Ilazi, one of the 28 women who received the milmore

Nicolae Ciobanu lives in a world that never sees daylight.
Even though he is blind, he travels frequently, works self-sufficiently, and votes in every election. In last month’s parliamentary election, Nicolae for the first time casted his vote independently, without any outside assistamore

“This year our community has much better fruits and vegetables, and compared to last year my own family is far better off,” said entrepreneur and farmer Kuralbay Nugmanov. “We believe that this is thanks to our bees.”
For people like Mr. Nugmanov, living in Uzbekistan’s Republic of Karakalpakmore

“I’ve been clean for four years now”, says Asmir. “It was a long and difficult fight. I’ve tried pretty much everything, methadone, tramal, bromazepam and all sorts of stuff but nothing worked. I was in prison when I first heard about the Tuzla Centre for Medical Substance Abuse Prevention. I decidemore

30 October, Tbilisi, Georgia – Cooperation between government and civil society is essential in fulfilling the rights of people living with HIV. Rights gaps include breach of confidentiality, stigma and discrimination, and criminalization of the behavior of key populations, concluded an intermore

Be it for economic or social reasons, the number of early marriages in Kyrgyzstan remains high. According to recent statistics, roughly 12 percent of brides in the country are under the age of 18.
In rural areas, girls are often subjected to arranged marriages upon completion of high smore

It’s a rare sunny day here in the Roma/Ashkali/Egyptian (RAE) quarter of Fushë Kosovë/Kosovo Polje, Kosovo; a welcome respite from a long spell of chilly, overcast winter weather.
It’s also the perfect day to skip school. Or, if you’re not enrolled in school – as is the case for nearlmore

With an unemployment rate of nearly 45 percent, finding a job for many in Bosnia and Herzegovina can seem like a mission impossible.
This has particularly been the case for women, many of whom have spent years trying to secure a brighter future for themselves and their families.
Today, however, themore

A new online game in Turkey is showing that raising children’s awareness on energy efficiency isn’t only important. It can also be fun.
Meltem Şengün Ucal is a professor at Kadir Has University. Using her background as a social scientist, she brought a differnet perspective to energy efficiency studmore

Aigul Manataeva, a mother of two and a successful businesswoman in Astana, Kazakhstan, is meticulous about clearing out household junk.
When she read a newsletter about the negative impact of e-waste, she found herself hard-pressed to find an environmentally sound way to get rid of her five old mobimore

The concept of ‘water and energy’ – the theme of World Water Day in 2014 – can conjure up thoughts of large cooling towers in power stations and the hefty power needs of industrial-scale water-treatment plants. But on a much smaller scale, within communities, water and energy also go hand in more

At over five million years old, Lake Prespa is amongst the most ancient freshwater lakes in the world.
The beautiful but environmentally vulnerable region of the Prespa Lake Basin is home to more than 2,000 species of fish, birds, mammals and plants. Many of these species are unique and manymore

New York, 11 December 2013 – UNDP launches the third volume of Empowering Lives, Building Resilience, a report compiling sustainable energy success stories from UNDP’s work in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. These stories demonstrate how sound policies, capacities and finanmore

Turkey is home to three globally recognized biodiversity hotspots, and has had a system of protected natural areas in place, but half its forests are considered degraded as a result of encroachment, overgrazing and illegal logging.
With UNDP support, Turkey is starting to turn the decline armore

A student at Public School Number 9 in Astana, 14-year-old Arman said that a few years ago, the gymnasium in his 63-year-old school was so cold in winter that he and his classmates could see their breath.
"We hated going to gym class," he said.
The chill hurt students’ healthmore

“It isn’t the strongest species that survives, nor even the most intelligent, but the species most adaptable to change.”
Charles Darwin
So begins After the Rain, the first ever documentary film made by a Macedonian director about climate change, will be screened in Skopje this more